2. California 2005

Taft 2005

July 7 - 10, 2005.
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Oil collects in one of the craters from the Lakeview gusher.
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Oil collects in one of the craters from the Lakeview gusher.

Day1012taftgusher

  • Welcome to sunny Taft in California's fertile Central Valley, the breadbasket and gas station of the world!!
  • Taft vista.
  • West Kern Oil Museum.
  • Early 20th century oil field equipment at the West Kern Oil Museum.
  • A modern oil pump at the West Kern Oil Museum.
  • Model of early Taft, when water was brought in by train at the rate of 20,000 gallons daily!!
  • Half of the oil pumped in California comes from western Kern County. They have three of the Giant oil fields in the US, meaning that each gian produces more than one billion barrels of oil.
  • West Kern Oil Museum.
  • The Lakeview gusher that came in around 1910. It took them over a year to cap it, and its flow created several oil lakes. At the time, it was one of the largest gushers in US history. Most of the oil actually couldn't be recovered and settled back into the earth. No wonder I got sick after visiting the site . . .
  • A sea of oil from the Lakeview gusher.
  • Berms built to capture the oil from the Lakeview gusher.
  • Oil collects in one of the craters from the Lakeview gusher.
  • A lovely day to go boating in the sea of oil!
  • West Kern Oil Museum.
  • Taft's symbolic wooden derrick.
  • Another oil pump. These dot the country-side, some of them in huge farms.
  • I suppose I agree with the sign in its strictest literal sense, but it amuses me nonetheless! Yes, rural conservative religious sentiment does populate the area. It was settled by the folk who supported the circuit-riders and tent-revivalists of the South in the 1930s.
  • Jim with his Taft family - the three mothers. June, Jan, and Dorothy. Jim adopts mothers at the drop of a hat!!
  • Jim and Kert, two people with a unique view of the world!!
  • Jim and June in June's garden. Yes, it's the desert.
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